Dead Website Trends: May These Video Marketing Tactics Rest in Peace

Mobile has changed much in the world of digital marketing. Search results pages now display local results for those who Google-on-the-go. Websites are designed to scale to a variety of screen sizes. Even the content on each page you consume is optimized to be easily scanned by the eye of humans and algorithms.

Mobile certainly is not going anywhere soon, but our blog series is focused on website trends that are dead. So what tactic are we taking aim at today? Video marketing. I know, I know…everything you’ve read is about how video marketing is the big cheese these days. I’m not arguing that video is dead—just the types of videos we’ve been shooting, and more specifically, how or where we consume those videos (ahem, on mobile devices). Let’s run through some now decrepit video tactics so you can modernize your video efforts.

Brands Producing Videos

For most of video marketing’s history, it’s been brands who dominate content creation. With the advent of Snapchat, Instagram Stories and Facebook Live, consumers have built confidence in their own content creation abilities. These videos, though less professionally produced, have an authenticity to them that makes the information easy-to-believe by consumers. It’s the 21st century’s version of word-of-mouth.

Questioning the quality and effectiveness of user-generated videos? Consider these facts from Statista:

• 59 percent of worldwide internet users uploaded or shared a video online as of Q3 2016
• 31 percent of U.S. consumers seek out user-generated-visual-content prior to purchase in 2016
• 527,760 photos and videos shared by Snapchat users in an internet minute in 2017

You can get started with user-generated videos by encouraging customers and brand advocates to upload their own content using custom, branded hashtags.

Catchy Jingles and Booming Voiceovers

A memorable jingle has a time and place. While someone is riding the bus or waiting at their doctor’s office is not the time…nor the place. Have you noticed that more and more videos in your newsfeed or on the sites you’re browsing feature subtitles? This helps accommodate those who don’t speak English or have hearing disabilities. But it’s also in response to that embarrassing moment we’ve all had when a video auto-played, obnoxiously loud, while we were trying to consume content on the sly.

YouTube and native Facebook videos now automatically include subtitles, even allowing you to make edits before posting (which is recommended, since robots don’t always get it right). Even advertisers can add captions to Facebook videos, and as of summer 2017, all users can add closed captioning to Facebook Live videos.

Here’s an example from one of the videos we recently produced (mute the video to see the subtitles).

https://www.facebook.com/southcollege/videos/10154603088871643/

Even if you chose not to enable closed captioning, you should at least create a more pleasant user experience by unchecking the autoplay option when embedding videos on your website. In 2016, 50% of all video plays were on mobile, with the number expected to grow to 60% in 2017 (Ooyala Global Video Index Report). So even if half your viewers are on a desktop computer, it’s still jarring to have audio unexpectedly blasting out of your computer speakers.

Horizontal Layouts

Mimicking the splendor of the golden screen, most videos posted online are shot in a horizontal layout. Traditionally, this layout is a widescreen (16:9) or even square (1:1) aspect ratio. No one has given much consideration to vertical videos, even going so far as to recommend against them. That is…until now.

Facebook and Snapchat, again, lead the way for the vertical video movement, showing that users are willing to consume video without rotating their phones. Who followed suit? The Washington Post, BBC News, and Condé Nast’s Golf Digest. This movement stems from the following facts:

• Smartphone users hold their phones vertically about 94 percent of the time. (MOVR Mobile Overview Report)
• Millennials are 2x as likely to be focused on video they watch on their mobile devices as they are on video consumed on a TV. (Ooyala Global Video Index Report)
• Vertical video ads are watched all the way through 9 times more than horizontal video ads on Snapchat. (Snapchat)

This provides a slight challenge to marketers, as simply cropping those 16:9 videos to a 2:3 vertical aspect ratio will cut important content like background images and text overlays. Videos should be re-edited or re-shot with this vertical mobile-friendly ratio in mind. This allows you to reuse the same content across platforms, without worrying about cutting that important content from the side of the screen.

Bring Your Video Marketing Back to Life

In the world of digital marketing, it can feel like you’re always playing catch up. Honestly, even agencies feel like that sometimes. The good thing with these shifts in video marketing, however, is that they aren’t major. You won’t have to rework your 2018 budget or tactical plan to execute these changes. If you want more advice or help, you also know where you can turn.

Check out our other recommendations in this blog series about Dead Website Trends.

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Updated: Jul 26, 2022